


A Perennial Investigation

by narsus



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner
Genre: Bisexual Character, Canonical Character Death, Implied Relationships, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Supernatural Elements, Unrequited Love, Unrequited Lust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-14 00:28:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9148702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narsus/pseuds/narsus
Summary: Gouto considers the reasoning behind his punishment and considers how the same rules might affect his successor.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Shin Megami Tensei - Devil Summoner belongs to Atlus, Sega and associates. Devil Summoner: Kuzunoha Raidou tai Kodoku-no-Marebito belongs to Taiyō Makabe, Anjū Harada, Kirihito Ayamura and associates.

He does remember. Of course he does. The Nameless Shrine. The voice from beyond the void. Its damning pronouncement. He was dying. Old age and old injuries had caught up with him so he'd gone to the only place that would bring him comfort, to die. He'd died. Easily, simply, as carelessly as he'd lived. There was no point in mourning his own passing after all. Not until they'd berated him for his service and promised some future punishment. He'd died before they could finish telling him what that punishment actually was.  
For the longest time he hadn't been aware of anything. Everything was dark and weightless and that was good enough. The great Raidou Kuzunoha had fallen and wasn't about to get up again anytime soon. It wasn't even a joke, let alone a bad one, but it amused him. It was easy to laugh at nothing in the void. He wasn't in pain anymore. Cobwebs didn't cloud his lungs and his sword arm didn't make that unfortunate cracking noise when he turned his wrist just so. If this was the afterlife then it wasn't bad. Eventually he might miss the vibrancy of colour or sound but right now he was content. This wasn't a bad ending after all. He'd earned something like this: this deep and dreamless peace.

Then one day, as much as time had any meaning, he'd woken up. He'd woken up less than a foot from the floor with that same ethereal voice calling him from out of the darkness. If they were calling him back from the grave, he'd thought, the cause be dire. To raise the dead and call them to fight alongside the living it truly must be their darkest hour. Except it wasn't. This was the will of Yatagarasu but not in such a vainglorious fashion. He wasn't to fight and die for his country again. He was to serve as a mentor to his successor. Also, to do that he'd been reborn as a cat. In the end it had made as much sense as the conundrum of deciding if he should think of Yatagarasu as a gendered being, a non-gendered being or a vast and nebulous 'they'.

Centuries later he sticks with 'they', with a dismissive swat of his paw if he's a safe distance from the Nameless Shrine. Centuries later he spends far too much time going backwards and forwards to the Nameless Shrine with one of his successors. Raidou Kuzunoha the fourteenth is rather traditional in many ways and one of those ways is his annual, ceremonial, visit to the Nameless Shrine. He goes to renew his vows, to rededicate himself to the service of Japan, and of course Yatagarasu. Gouto goes to observe, officially. Unofficially he goes to make sure that the boy isn't tricked into offering more than he can sensibly commit. Gouto can't make any claims that he was tricked into his eternal service of course but he listens carefully to Yatagarasu's words nevertheless.

In the outside world, outside the Nameless Shrine and the equally closed-off Kuzunoha village, the rest of their nation carries on the steady march of progress. It is slow progression but the changes are apparent: a sensible pace for change in a country steeped in such history. Cultural change must come at the correct pace or it will not bring the benefits it should. Gouto is not fond of riding the streetcars but they are useful; he's not entirely sure that his successor would know how to ride a horse. Not that it matters these days. They could take a train to Anamizu for the oyster festival after all.

Some days he wonders if he should just curl up on a windowsill, in the sunlight, and just concentrate on being a cat. Wonders if he should start playing with dusters and knocking toast of people's plates. He's tried the latter but Narumi is surprisingly agile for a self-proclaimed layabout. Though it's worth noting that there aren't many layabouts with such an extensive military background. Even fewer who receive off-the-record visits from envoys of both prominent politicians and the Imperial household itself. In an earlier age Gouto would have dismissed Narumi's demeanour as resulting from the type of poor discipline that tended to go into the raising of bastard sons. Not sons of the Imperial household. They wouldn't sully themselves in that fashion but their retainers sometimes did. Some powerful nobleman who'd kept a mistress might easily decide that his son should be raised with all the trappings of nobility and none of the grace. It's easy to picture it occurring like that. Except this isn't a tale from Lady Murasaki's fabled pen and no Kuzunoha has called Heian-kyō the capital in three hundred years. Gouto is just old and judgemental some days.

Modern Japan is a necessary thing along with modern men like Shouhei Narumi. Even if he insists on drinking coffee and keeping his _particular_ magazines in an open box that sits brazenly exposed on a shelf. Gouto has thought about practicing being a cat by using the box as a litter tray but he knows it would only fall to the boy to clear it up. The magazines aren't of much offence to Gouto anyway. He's not in any position to fault what a man does by himself in the night. Still, he wonders if he should do some investigation of his own concerning these matters. Not least of all because Yatagarasu's idea of punishment might have grown more severe these days and his young successor has come far too close to death in his scant fifteen years already. It also doesn't help that once upon a time, many centuries ago, he'd let himself be driven out of a village to protect the honour of another beautiful boy. They'd locked up their daughters but they hadn't locked up their sons, and he'd always been an opportunist. It hadn't helped that the boy had been the village chief's son either. Still, nothing irreversible has happened yet. Yatagarasu wouldn't punish the boy for the natural sentiment that any young man might fall prey to and Gouto strongly suspects that they couldn't punish Narumi anyway. Which might eventually be the key to it. If his young successor chooses a lover that Yatagarasu can't touch, for any number of reasons, he might be safe.

There's time for Gouto to examine the matter at any rate. The only inconvenient thing that keeps happening at the moment is that fetching blush that steals across the boy's cheeks when he watches that layabout for too long. It's enough of an indication that nothing further will occur for the foreseeable future. Which gives Gouto time to find out why it is exactly that Narumi receives quite so many prestigious visitors, and perhaps, more importantly, why he seems to be spared Yatagarasu censure. Even the great Gouto Douji needs some time to ensure that the reasoning isn't because Narumi is some class of youkai, perhaps a kappa, who would punish the boy's audacity by removing his soul from his body.

**Author's Note:**

> Heian-kyō is of course one of the former names of Kyoto, the former capital till 1868.  
> Kappa folklore suggests that they like to eat the shirikodama which may or may not contain the human soul. One of their methods of doing this is to suck it out through the anus.


End file.
